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Show Summary
In this episode, Dylan Silver interviews Cody Clark, a custom home builder in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, who transitioned from a 16-year career as a fireman to building custom homes. Cody shares his journey into the construction industry, starting with building his own home and gradually taking on projects for friends and fellow firefighters. He discusses the unique challenges of building homes from the ground up, particularly the importance of proper foundation work and the differences between various construction methods, such as pier and beam versus concrete slabs. Cody emphasizes the significance of quality over profit in construction, advocating for thorough preparation and the use of piers as a cost-effective insurance policy against foundation issues.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Cody Clark (00:00)
No, most guys don’t do piers and it’s because they’re profit first, not quality first. And that’s gonna be all your mega builders, know what mean? They’re building on what I would call poor soil. have an engineer telling me, he’s like,it’s fine. It only has, it has five inches of movement. Well, five inches of movement is a lot of
Dylan Silver (02:02)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today’s guest, Cody Clark is a custom home builder in DFW. You can find him at clarkcustomhomes.com. Cody, thanks for taking the time today.Cody Clark (02:14)
Yes, of course. Thanks for having me.Dylan Silver (02:17)
When we talk about the customspace, I know this is very competitive. You’re not just competing with other people in custom homes, but also too, for folks who are buying homes, they have so many different options. How did you get into the custom home space?
Cody Clark (02:35)
Yeah, so I’ll keep it short and sweet. Long story short, I was a fireman. some, obviously had some free time. Didn’t work, only worked every third day. Ended up building my house and then a buddy of mine is like, can you build me a house? I was like, well, I’m really a fireman, not a home builder. And he’s like, it was a great job. So I built his house and another buddy said, can you build me a house? Another buddy said, I built a bunch of houses for a bunch of firemen is what happened. And then people were like, you do a great job. And I was like, oh, thanks.So here we are, we’re building about 30 houses a year now. This is our seventh year in business. ⁓ We’ve actually turned into, I’ve retired now, retired from the fire department. So left way early from the fire department, which was not the plan.
Dylan Silver (03:17)
How long were youworking for the fire department for?
Cody Clark (03:21)
A total of 16 years. Total of 16 years.Dylan Silver (03:24)
And thenwhen people talk about building homes, ground up construction in general, right? This is a unique skill set. I know a lot of flippers in DFW, but flipping a home is not the same thing as building a home from the ground up. That’s a whole other animal entirely. Did you grow up swinging a hammer? Did you grow up framing homes? How did you learn to build homes?
Cody Clark (03:47)
Yeah, so we would buy these really run down properties and then go in there and fix them up. So I didn’t know what a subcontractor was. That’s no joke. I didn’t even know that was a thing. thought a home builder was the electrician and the plumber because that’s, we laid flooring and wired the houses and roofed them and did all the trades. And then in high school, I went to work for a plumber. I worked for a plumber for a little while. I worked in the cabinet shop.I had like I had like I had a pretty good idea of like, you know, how things go together and how they work. I hung a hard sheetrock commercial commercial drywall actually at UNT at the college there in Denton. But yeah, so I mean, I just I learned the trades and then when it came time to build my house, told my wife, I said, I think I can I think I can do it. It’s just it’s not nothing’s really a mystery to me. Like, mean, I’m like, mean, I don’t I’m not a professional trim carpenter or professional attrition, but I got a pretty good idea how it goes together.
Dylan Silver (04:28)
Yeah.Cody Clark (04:46)
So I feel like I can manage people.Dylan Silver (04:49)
specifically about the foundation because in Texas you’ve got pure and bream you’ve got you’ve got slab right but what I’ve seen more times than not is is that that becomes anespecially for for flippers who they may have experienced maybe doing some type of foundation repair but in terms of laying a foundation on a home that seems to be particularly tricky what’s been your experience you know
basically building these homes from the ground up. And then do you have any advice for people who may be coming from that fix and flip world into new construction?
Cody Clark (06:16)
Yeah, so the foundations are tricky. So a good foundation starts out with a lot of prep work. mean, so there’s a couple different ways we can really get into the weeds on foundations and different types of slabs. But a lot of times we’ll inject the soil. So basically what I explain to people is like, when we inject the soil, think of the soil as a sponge. You ever seen like an old dried out sponge sitting on the edge of the sink? Well, we inject the soil, we’re we’re swelling the sponge. Think of the dirt as a sponge.So we swell it with a, it’s natural chemical compounds, but it keeps that ground swollen. That way it doesn’t heave, it doesn’t move. And then we go in there and we cap it with a clay top and then we pour our foundation on top of that. If there’s a risk of movement, we will put piers in there. I always say piers are a cheap insurance policy. You need one pier for every hundred square feet. It’s just like a roll of thumb. Don’t quote me on that. Your engineer will.
call out the specifics, but I can tell you like, hey, for 10,000 bucks, we could drop 50, 20 foot piers in here for 10,000 bucks. I just totally made that number up. The math is probably wrong, but you get the point. So it’s not a ton of money when you’re spending, you’re like, well, if I spend 50,000 on a slab, no piers, maybe it’s good, but maybe I spend 60,000 on a slab with some piers. And then we soil inject, we do the piers, we do the engineering. We don’t have problems long-term. So that’s…
Dylan Silver (07:39)
Let me askyou a question. think a lot of people are probably hearing this thinking you got concrete and you got, excuse me, you got concrete slab and then you’ve got pier and beam, but you’re talking about, you know, having ⁓ piers with the concrete. Is that common practice? Are most people that have concrete homes putting some type of slab in there?
Cody Clark (08:00)
No, most guys don’t do piers and it’s because they’re profit first, not quality first. And that’s gonna be all your mega builders, know what mean? They’re building on what I would call poor soil. have an engineer telling me, he’s like, well, we won’t name names because I’ve already had a cease and desist letter for naming names. you know, it’s like.they’ll say, well, we can, it’s fine. It only has, it has five inches of movement. Well, five inches of movement is a lot of
And we’d to get our movement down to less than one on our soil. ⁓ So, and, you know, that’s a whole discussion about, you know, when and where and why piers are used, but.
Dylan Silver (08:43)
I want to pivot a bit here and if I can ask you about ⁓ concrete slab versus pier and beam in general. Of course, depending on where you’re at in the country, you’ll see one or the other in Texas. Pier and beam is very common for folks who are listening outside of Texas and many Texas homes. You can even see underneath the home because it’s on pier and beam, although that’s not always exposed like that. You mentioned that there is an increased cost to adding these piers when there is aCody Clark (09:07)
Yes.Dylan Silver (09:13)
a slab, ⁓ is that increased cost then denoted in some way to prospective homeowners? Like for instance, would it say like mixed ⁓ concrete and pier and beam or like with piers or would it just say concrete slab or would it say the other? Because that’s of course a big value add for folks to know that it’s basically like a reinforced foundation.Cody Clark (09:41)
Yeah, so we actually say, like your slab on grate is this much money and then right below it, it says pierce. And we’re not detailing out, like we’re gonna do 12 inch piers with two pieces of number five rebar, 18 foot deep, this many piers, and then attach an engineer’s drawing.The engineers looked at all the structural loads, all the vertical loads on there. Of course, we’ll do a bunch of perimeter piers and then some.
We put them in key places, like when we have heavy loads from ceiling loads, roof loads. But yeah, those, mean, ma’am, the piers are just such a cheap insurance policy, in my opinion. If you’re gonna be in your house for a long time, I would say just do it. It’s a cheap insurance policy.
Dylan Silver (10:48)
Yeah.Now, pivoting a bit here, Cody, when we talk about custom homes in general, I think that this can run the gamut from like a super modern home to something where someone wants maybe a unique layout. Do you have any specialty ⁓ when it comes to the design of these homes?
Cody Clark (11:22)
So we actually don’t do the architecturals currently. We actually provide, that’s a third party service that we send it out to. As far as the interior, now there’s, it’s really, there’s a really important distinction here. There’s architecturals and there’s interior design. And a lot of times you’ll have people say, no, I can do the interior design. I know what I’m doing, but a lot of times what homeowners don’t understand is it’s overwhelming. Cause there’s, I don’t know.Dylan Silver (11:30)
Okay.Cody Clark (11:51)
a thousand decisions, that’s no exaggeration, a thousand decisions be made. So we actually have interior design in-house and that makes the process a thousand times better. Because we used to just give, we’ll say lighting for example, here’s $5,000 for lighting. People would every day, all day, guarantee you they would spend $10,000 and say, why didn’t you give me enough money? And so we brought our interior designer in-house for like, here’s what we’re working with $5,000 because we want to keep these homes affordable but super nice.And so she’s shopping, wheeling and dealing and then it caught it forced us to make, you know, ⁓ vendor, you know, vendor relationships, you know, so we’re like, hey, we’re going to buy all our lighting from you, but we need a better price and we need quality and we need service because there’s lighting is a whole another animal, but you can buy lighting slots to have a one year warranty, three, five, 10 year warranty. But, know, of course the price starts, you know, ticking up, but I digress.
Dylan Silver (12:46)
When we talk about some of the ways where these segments of a real estate deal can become tricky, you have moving pieces, moving components. You’ve got a builder, you’ve got a designer, you’ve got an architect, and then as the prospective buyer, the homeowner, you’ve kind of got to corral all these moving pieces. As a builder yourself and as someone who’s worked with ⁓ homeowners, architects, designers,You know, have you seen ⁓ with other builders or in the industry at large that, you know, because there’s so many moving pieces that sometimes these, you know, this can be an issue. It can be tricky.
Cody Clark (13:27)
Yeah, yeah, that’s this. This is this is what I tell everybody. Every client that comes in. I there’s a lot of really good builders out there and they can they will build you a good house. Now the hallmark of a builder is not only knowing what you’re doing on the building side, but being being able to orchestrate the symphony, right? Because there’s a there’s there’s 500 human hands that are involved in this. There’s 90 trades that are involved in this thing.And so keeping just from the building side, keeping all that straight. And then from the client side, have, you’re the middle man, you’re the general contractor, if you will, but your job is to orchestrate both parties. A lot of times what happens is clients feel like they’re not heard or they don’t know what’s going on, which is what we have. We got really good at the building side, but failed to understand the client side.
And so these last couple of years, we’ve really honed in on the client side, making it a really smooth process for them with like an update every Friday, a live schedule, pictures every single day, you know what mean? So a live budget that way they can see like, hey, I want to add, I want to change, I had one say, I want to change the brick to stone. What’s the difference? Okay, you know, I can show them, I can just send them a change order. They can see it, they can approve it or deny it.
But that’s the biggest complaint that I hear from homeowners is they feel like they’re on a scavenger hunt. They don’t know what’s going on. And the builder’s mind, he’s like, I know what’s going on. Why don’t you trust me, right?
You know, but on the homeowner side, they’re like, I don’t know what’s going on. Like, what are we doing here?
Dylan Silver (15:49)
And of course this is going to range Cody, but is there a general timeline for, hey, we are making first contact with our architect and have the plans done to the home has been constructed and ready to move in.Cody Clark (16:06)
Yeah, generally I tell people from the time you first call me to the time we end this deal, it’s going to be about a year. And the, and the, happens or what’s happening right now, I don’t know. It’s just taking, just things are taking longer. The architects are backed up. you know, our interior design gets backed up. and then we, you know, of course we try to do things simultaneously, like submit for city permits. That’s we’ve been waiting on city permits on a job for three months now.But the cities are way backed up. Like city of Celina is super backed up. They say we’ve got 60 permits, we’ve got five people to do these permits. But typically when we break ground, the time we finish is about six months on what I would say like a normal build. On our luxury side, it’s 12 to 18 to 24 months, just depends on how big the house is, how involved it is.
Dylan Silver (16:32)
Wow.wanna pivot a bit here. You’re in DFW, I mentioned to you before hopping on the podcast. I lived in Denton for a little bit under a year last year. And one of the interesting things that I noticed, and you had mentioned this well before hopping on here, is just the urban sprawl of DFW is massive, right? mean, ⁓ it’s so big, right? And then you’ve got this cultural distinction between Fort Worth and Dallas. And so when people…
especially folks outside of Texas, when you say DFW, that’s a huge physical landmass that’s now almost extending practically halfway to Oklahoma, if not to Oklahoma. As a builder in that area, are there any areas that you particularly see ⁓ from a building standpoint or from a home ownership standpoint?
Cody Clark (17:39)
Yes.Dylan Silver (17:50)
that you’re saying, that’s really an up and coming area that I would like to be in if I’m buying a home.Cody Clark (17:57)
Yeah, I think, oddly enough, don’t, I’ll just, it always surprises me, you know, like these communities that I’ve seen for 20 years that were farmland. right. Like so Van Alstyne, Gunter, Celina Prosper. I think Celina and Prosper have hit their stride, but now we’re starting to see it move up towards like go down 75, you know, down 35, you know, like up towards Oklahoma. And that was no man’s was no man’s land. was nobody lived there.Dylan Silver (18:21)
Yeah.Cody Clark (18:25)
And nothing was, but now people are calling that North Dallas. And I’m like, well, I’m like, Dallas is two hours away. You know, like that’s not North Dallas. That’s freaking North of nowhere. You know, like having, I know you’re wrong. Those are, they’re very nice communities. Not, I wasn’t being derogatory, but it’s just like, but it’s funny to me when people say North Dallas and I’m like, Dallas is 70 miles from here. You know, like it’s staying close. You know, like, so it’s like, how is that North, North Dallas? I don’t know, whatever. You know?Dylan Silver (18:51)
It’s a hop,skip, and a jump. Yeah, it’s north. I mentioned to you before hopping on that I moved out to Denton because my buddy had said, oh yeah, it’s DFW Metro, not knowing exactly how far the commute was gonna be. But when we talk about this urban sprawl, it’s a very interesting concept because you’ve got people commuting from further out, but then you’ve also got these.
Cody Clark (18:53)
Yeah, yeah, just, yeah, just be there.Yeah.
Dylan Silver (19:17)
these cities that have, or these areas that have become self-sustaining to a large degree as well. I wouldn’t necessarily throw in a Prosper like that at this point, but if you look forward 20, 30 years in the future over which a home loan matures, you could very well see some of those areas become like their own sphere and less attached to DFW with time.Cody Clark (19:43)
Yes, I totally agree with that. We’ve seen that with Frisco, we’ve seen that with Plano, know, McKinney, there was nothing, there was not one thing in McKinney, but you know, it went from 100,000 people, now it’s almost 400,000 people. know, mean, Denton, Denton’s the same way. mean, Denton was just a little island out there by itself, you know, but now it’s grown tremendously.Dylan Silver (19:58)
Yeah.Yeah, I there’s a Facebook page Denton around towners. And sometimes I see people saying like, where’s the jobs in Denton? And as someone who’s not from Denton, I’m like the job. What do mean? You mean the jobs? This is this is a pathway to DFW. And I realized like, well, no people now this is its own entity. Like this is its own, you know, deal over here. And so you mentioned some of those towns, you know, going up to Oklahoma right now, they may be emerging. But again,
Cody Clark (20:12)
Yes, yes, it’s been a run down of years.Dylan Silver (20:35)
you fast forward into the future, there could be a similar sentiment, right? We are coming up on time here though, Cody. Any new projects that you’re working on as well, what’s the best way for our audience to reach out to you or your team?Cody Clark (20:50)
Yeah, so as far as projectsso our 2026 initiative is to start putting some specs on the ground, some luxury specs. So, you know, in that, you know, two to $3 million price range, probably in that Celina Prosper area, you know, maybe up to Van Alstyne Gunter, people that are looking to move out of, you know, the hustle and bustle of maybe Frisco or McKinney, want something, maybe they want an acre of land, but still want really nice house. So that’s our 2026 initiative.
And the best way to get a hold of us is through our website. So just go on there and fill out our website form. We ask a bunch of questions on there, but we just want to make sure that we’re well aligned for our clients and that we’re a good fit for you and you’re a good fit for us.
Dylan Silver (21:33)
Kody, thank you so much for taking the time today.Cody Clark (21:35)
Yeah, no problem. Thank you.
